UPDATE 3-Facebook CEO urges Brazilians to decry WhatsApp block

SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO May 3 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc's
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called on Brazilians to
demand his company's WhatsApp messaging service never be
blocked again after an appeals court on Tuesday overturned the
application's second suspension in five months.

In a post in English on his Facebook page, the U.S.
billionaire and Facebook founder urged Brazilians to gather
outside Congress in the capital Brasilia at 6 p.m. (2100 GMT) on
Wednesday to rally in favor of legislation that would prevent
Internet services from being blocked.

WhatsApp was cut off in Brazil at 2 p.m. (1700 GMT) on
Monday after a judge in the remote northeastern state of Sergipe
ordered Brazil's five main wireless operators to block access to
the app for 72 hours. The reason for the order was not made
public.

The suspension of WhatsApp's text message and Internet voice
telephone service for smartphones was lifted after about 24
hours when an appeals judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of an
injunction by the company's lawyers, the court said in a
statement. Some 100 million users were affected.

"You and your friends can help make sure this never happens
again, and I hope you get involved," Zuckerberg wrote on
Facebook. He also posted a link to a petition, calling efforts
to block communication "very scary in a democracy."

The suspension highlighted growing international tensions
between technology companies' privacy concerns and national
authorities' efforts to use social media to gain information on
possible criminal activities.

The same judge in Sergipe ordered the imprisonment of a
Brazil-based Facebook executive in March in a dispute over
demands to access the company's encrypted messaging service as
part of a drug trafficking investigation.
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